https://cis.org/North/Problem-Some-EB5-Petitions-What-Was-Real-Source-Money

While the overwhelming corruption problem with the EB-5 immigrant investor program comes from Stateside middlemen stealing or misusing aliens’ funds (see, for instance, here, here, and here), there is another difficulty as well: some would-be alien EB-5 investors are denied green cards because they cannot prove to the government that they secured the investment money in a legitimate way.

These are two quite different matters and involve two totally different sets of players.

Since most investors in the program come from China, it is safe to say that most of those denied applications for this reason are from China too, though hard numbers on that remain hidden. Corruption is a major challenge in China.

The authorization for the main part of the EB-5 program, that dealing with the pooling of alien investments through regional centers, was not renewed in a Senate action last month, and that decision may or may not be permanent.

The part of the EB-5 program that died on June 30 allowed aliens to essentially buy a family-size batch of green cards if they put $900,000 into a DHS-approved, but not guaranteed, investment, usually in big city real estate. The minimum investment used to be $500,000.